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The Underlying, The 56th Belgrade October Salon: The Pleasure of Love

Curated by David Elliott

The 56th October Salon in Belgrade, The Pleasure of Love: Transient Emotion in Contemporary Art will featured Janet Laurence alongside fellow Australian artist Tracy Moffatt. Curated by David Elliot, the 56th October Salon includes 60 artists both emerging and established, Laurence will be exhibiting two major works Underlying (2016) and Vanishing (2009).

“Laurence explores what it might mean to heal, albeit metaphorically, the natural environment. Trees are the lungs of our cities – they exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen – and they usually live for several generations. Today, however, very old trees are dying in our cities, while the crops and fields in the outback have been transformed into vast barren expanses. Janet Laurence fuses this sense of communal loss with a search for connection with powerful life-forces. Her work alerts us to the subtle dependencies between water, life, culture and nature in our eco-system. In the face of this, we yearn for a form of alchemy, for the power of enchantment or transformation. It seems that the only place for that sensation is the place of art. In the tradition of Joseph Beuys, and some of the Arte Povera artists from the 1960s, such as Jannis Kounellis or Mario Merz, Janet Laurence reminds us that art can act as a kind of transformation point for ideas and it can provoke its audience into a renewed awareness about our environment.” – Victoria Lynn